There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
—Hamlet, Act 1, Scene V

Nineteenth-century France turned out splendid atheists. There was nothing half-baked about a nineteenth-century French atheist. When he left the Catholic faith, he didn’t shilly-shally around with Protestantism or the religious methadone treatment called Unitarianism. He went straight for hard-boiled materialism that declared the supernatural to be bunk.

One such man was Alexis Carrel, a nineteenth-century doctor who won the Nobel prize in Medicine in 1912. Raised a Catholic, Carrel had, by 1900, rejected all supernatural belief and become a committed atheistic materialist. But he also believed in investigating facts rather than simply imposing ideology on things. So in 1902, he accompanied a doctor friend to the shrine at Lourdes where, it was said, the Blessed Virgin had appeared to a girl named Bernadette Soubirous in 1858. There were many stories of miraculous cures at the shrine as sick people washed in or drank from a spring that had been dug there by Bernadette. Profoundly skeptical, Carrel wanted to see for himself. So he boarded a train for Lourdes—and met Marie Bailly. Fr. Stanley Jaki tells the story:

Marie Bailly was born in 1878. Both her father . . . and her mother died of tuberculosis. Of her five siblings only one was free of that disease. She was twenty when she first showed symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis. A year later she was diagnosed with tuberculous meningitis, from which she suddenly recovered when she used Lourdes water. In two more years, in 1901, she came down with tubercular peritonitis. Soon she could not retain food. In March 1902 doctors in Lyons refused to operate on her for fear that she would die on the operating table.

On May 25, 1902, she begged her friends to smuggle her onto a train that carried sick people to Lourdes. She had to be smuggled because, as a rule, such trains were forbidden to carry dying people. The train left Lyons at noon. At two o’clock next morning she was found dying. Carrel was called. He gave her morphine by the light of a kerosene lamp and stayed with her. Three hours later he diagnosed her case as tuberculous peritonitis and said half aloud that she would not arrive in Lourdes alive. The immediate diagnosis at that time largely depended on the procedure known as palpation. In Lourdes Marie Bailly was examined by several doctors. On May 27 she insisted on being carried to the Grotto, although the doctors were afraid that she would die on the way there. Carrel himself took such a grim view of her condition that he vowed to become a monk if she reached the Grotto alive, a mere quarter of a mile from the hospital.

The rest is medical history. It is found in Dossier 54 of the Archives of the Medical Bureau of Lourdes. The dossier contains the immediate depositions by three doctors, including Carrel, and Marie Bailly’s own account, which she wrote in November and gave to Carrel, who then duly forwarded it to the Medical Bureau in Lourdes.

The highlights of Marie Bailly’s own account are as follows: On arriving at the baths adjoining the Grotto, she was not allowed to be immersed. She asked that some water from the baths be poured on her abdomen. It caused her searing pain all over her body. Still she asked for the same again. This time she felt much less pain. When the water was poured on her abdomen the third time, it gave her a very pleasant sensation.

Meanwhile Carrel stood behind her, with a notepad in his hands. He marked the time, the pulse, the facial expression and other clinical details as he witnessed under his very eyes the following: The enormously distended and very hard abdomen began to flatten and within thirty minutes it had completely disappeared. No discharge whatsoever was observed from the body.

She was first carried to the Basilica, then to the Medical Bureau, where she was again examined by several doctors, among them Carrel. In the evening she sat up in her bed and had a dinner without vomiting. Early next morning she got up on her own and was already dressed when Carrel saw her again.

Carrel could not help registering that she was cured. What will you do with your life now? Carrel asked her. I will join the Sisters of Charity to spend my life caring for the sick, was the answer. The next day she boarded the train on her own, and after a twenty-four-hour trip on hard benches, she arrived refreshed in Lyons. There she took the streetcar and went to the family home, where she had to prove that she was Marie Bailly indeed, who only five days earlier had left Lyons in a critical condition.

Carrel continued to take a great interest in her. He asked a psychiatrist to test her every two weeks, which was done for four months. She was regularly tested for traces of tuberculosis. In late November she was declared to be in good health both physically and mentally. In December she entered the novitiate in Paris. Without ever having a relapse she lived the arduous life of a Sister of Charity until 1937, when she died at the age of 58.

Carrel was caught between two worlds. As an atheistic materialist, he didn’t want to be identified with what he regarded as the gullible hoi polloi who believed this stunning cure to be a miracle from heaven. But as an honest man, Carrel simply couldn’t ignore what he saw, as many in the French medical establishment insisted he should do. For many years, Carrel tried to distance himself from both groups and tried to ascribe Marie’s healing to gobbledygook about “psychic forces” and various other lame naturalistic explanations. But at the end of his life, Carrel finally received the sacraments of the Church and died reconciled to God.

Emile Zola was a contemporary of Carrel’s. A famous novelist and literary figure, he, too, was an atheist and materialist, but unlike Carrel, he was not going to let any facts get in the way of that faith when he visited Lourdes.

Zola . . . accepted with simple faith the unproved and unprovable dogma that the natural world is a closed system, and that supernatural agencies do not exist. Zola’s negative faith was proof against the stubborn fact of the two miracles which he himself witnessed at Lourdes, of which the first was the sudden cure of an advanced stage of lupus. Zola describes Marie Lemarchand’s condition as he saw her on the way to Lourdes. “It was,” writes Zola, “a case of lupus which had preyed upon the unhappy woman’s nose and mouth. Ulceration had spread and was hourly spreading and devouring the membrane in its progress. The cartilage of the nose was almost eaten away, the mouth was drawn all on one side by the swollen condition of the upper lip. The whole was a frightful distorted mass of matter and oozing blood.” Zola’s account is incomplete, for the patient was coughing and spitting blood. The apices of both lungs were affected, and she had sores on her leg. Dr. d’Hombres saw her immediately before and immediately after she entered the bath. “Both her cheeks, the lower part of her nose, and her upper lip were covered with a tuberculous ulcer and secreted matter abundantly. On her return from the baths I at once followed her to the hospital. I recognized her quite well although her face was entirely changed. Instead of the horrible sore I had so lately seen, the surface was red, it is true, but dry and covered with a new skin. The other sores had also dried up in the piscina.” The doctors who examined her could find nothing the matter with the lungs, and testified to the presence of the new skin on her face. Zola was there. He had said “I only want to see a cut finger dipped in water and come out healed.” “Behold the case of your dreams, M. Zola,” said the President, presenting the girl whose hideous disease had made such an impression on the novelist before the cure. “Ah no!” said Zola, “I do not want to look at her. She is still too ugly,” alluding to the red color of the new skin. Before he left Lourdes Zola recited his credo to the President of the Medical Bureau. “Were I to see all the sick at Lourdes cured, I would not believe in a miracle.”

Roughly speaking, Carrel and Zola represent two basic worldviews: supernaturalism and naturalism. Supernaturalism, the view held by the overwhelming majority of the human race throughout history, says there is Something beyond and outside of nature and that this Something may, from time to time, intervene in nature. Naturalism says the universe of time, space, matter, and energy is all there is or ever was or ever will be and there is nothing beyond it. The question that immediately arises when considering stories like these healings at Lourdes is: “Do miracles—intervention in nature by some power beyond nature—ever really happen?”

OK, there is a lot of confusion about general relativity here. That is really a red herring, but someone should finish it up. First of all, Einstein did not even really think that space was “empty”—he actually felt that some kind of ether should be present to hold things together in the same universe, only it could not have properties similar to any solid, liquid, or gas. Most physicists today would equate his “ether” with the quantum vacuum, which is not exactly empty, just as empty as it gets. Also, the picture of a bowling ball distorting a rubber sheet does not assume gravity, because it does not really care what pushes the bowling ball down; the point is the distortion of the sheet. This cartoon picture usually confuses the gravitational potential with the curvature of space, though, and is only at best an aid for thinking about the theory—it certainly is not the reason behind the theory. For that matter, Einstein did not start by denying the parallel postulate; he just did not assume it, but started instead from plausible assumptions about things that are directly measurable, and a Riemannian geometry resulted.

Posted by David Hamilton on Friday, Jan, 31, 2014 2:24 PM (EST):

Mark and others -
Is the Carrel/ Marie Bailly Lourdes miracle case on the list of official Lourdes cures?
It is quoted endlessly in support of miracles because of Carrel’s writings but her case is not on the official Lourdes list.
If not, why not ? Do you know ?
Dh

Posted by John Schuh on Friday, Jan, 24, 2014 6:25 PM (EST):

The image I invoke came from Scientific American many, many years ago, and shows the mass of the sun warping the texture of space. A popular publication could do more than give a hint of the complexity of the structure of space. As for gravity, push come to shove and Einstein does not “define” gravity much differently than Aristotle. It in fact is an undefined element in both views , an omnipresent but invisible hand on the scales more than something that is explained. Einstein died without ever finding a unified system that had the clarity of Newtonian physics, in whose whose very limited truth the Enlightenment found a key it thought could be fitted into every locked door.

Posted by Tom in AZ on Friday, Jan, 24, 2014 2:52 AM (EST):

@John Schuh: The “gravity is like a ball pressing on a sheet” model has always infuriated me. What makes the ball press down? GRAVITY. Your model can’t include the thing you’re trying to model! Better to think of space as a series of elastic sheets, taut across a frame, and masses as being placed between them—they press together and their tension pushes toward the objects.
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And general relativity does, in fact, bring gravitation “fully into the system”. That is, in fact, the DEFINITION of general relativity—“special relativity, plus a model of gravitation”. It has nothing to do with quantum theory.
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As for Ptolemy and the epicycles…the Ptolemaic model, which like all premodern astronomy was MATH, not physics, was perfectly complete, and accounted for all evidence observable prior to the 18th century. There were some errors introduced by 1500 years of re-copying the same tables of ephemera by hand, but the Ptolemaic model was still fundamentally sound for what they used it for. And Copernicus had MORE epicycles than Ptolemy did.
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You need to go read “The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown” on Michael Flynn’s blog, he has the whole story about each of the six or seven competing models in play in the “Copernican” revolution (that was actually Keplerian, when all the dust had settled).

Posted by John Schuh on Friday, Jan, 24, 2014 12:15 AM (EST):

Riemaniann geometry begins with a denial of Euclid’s parallel postulate and goes from there. Of course, space is “empty,”but if you want to visualize what the math says, you can think of it explaining gravitation action as a large ball depressing a sheet. But this is only by analogy, a model like Niels Bohr’s first views of the atom, as a kind of planetary system. His general theory did not account for, nor can it account for quantum theory, much less bring gravitation fully into the system. Maybe if we come up with better math, we will someday be able to come up with a system to supercede Einstein, but I doubt we will ever have anything as “simple” as Newtonian physics. Yes, our physics is incomplete, just as Ptolemy with epicycles was incomplete after evidence was introduced that could not be reconciled by it, but without anything like a Copernican hypothesis to serve as a departure point, It would seem that where physics is concerned, we are like the little boy who has just learned to tie his shoe and is asked to describe the mathematics of it all. He can do it, but not reduce it to a science.

Posted by Tom in AZ on Thursday, Jan, 23, 2014 5:59 PM (EST):

@John Schuh: That’s not even close to what relativity says about gravity. It conceptualizes space as a Riemannian manifold rather than as a Euclidean space, which among other things means that its “straight lines” are generalized to curved space (I don’t know enough calculus to explain that better—sorry—but “fabric” it is not, not even really by analogy; Einstein did indeed conceptualize space as an emptiness, just as an emptiness with strange geometric properties).
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As for whether general relativity escaped Einstein, given that “general relativity” was first described in a 1916 paper BY HIM, no, I don’t think it did. Neither general nor special relativity is related to quantum theory, which you seem to be saying; each has to assume the other one does not exist in order to make any sense at all (both account for observations not covered by Newtonian physics, but cannot account for each other).
-
The mere fact that the two physics theories have to ignore each other in order to work, means nothing, pro or con, as to whether there is a single unified physics; it probably just means, as most scientists take it to mean, that our theories are incomplete.

Posted by John Schuh on Thursday, Jan, 23, 2014 5:21 PM (EST):

“Gravity” has no scientific explanation. It is too fundamental an aspect of creation. Einstein postulated “space” not as an emptiness but a kind of “fabric,” and this can be visualized as a sheet of rubber with the sun as like a bowling ball around which the earth and the other planets “spiral,” but much of this explantation depends on the hypotheses of “rubber-sheet” geometry,combined with the basic rules of various “geometries.” Mathematical models with limited explanatory power. The general theory of relativity escaped Einstein, especially quantum theory was developed and then Schroedinger showed that no uniformed mathematics could be developed to pull it all together. Many special physics but not the single physics which the 19th century believed it had. People have latched onto Darwinism as an all explanatory theory but its central devise, natural selection, only hold up until closely examined. The more we know about genetics we see that its only history function was to convince so many the laws of like have a purlye material basis. If so what that is remains unknown.

Posted by Tom in AZ on Thursday, Jan, 23, 2014 1:20 PM (EST):

@John Schuh: And Einstein didn’t demonstrate how curvature in space-time results in motion toward the center of a body. Newton had even less connection between mass and gravity—seriously, there isn’t even the hint of a guess as to what connects the two, in all of classical physics, Newton just assumes the latter is a function of the former (his assumption happens to have explained all of Kepler’s planetary-motion laws, but he had no explanation of the underlying mechanism).
-
But “evolutionists”, by which you mean Darwinists (evolution is an observed phenomenon, Darwin’s “natural selection” is one theory to explain it—Lamarck had a different one) don’t actually assume anything about what the mind is, or not. They talk about the genetics of the BRAIN, which they do in fact have some data on, but that’s not the same thing.
-
Some philosophical materialists who pretend Darwinism supports their view (it doesn’t support any metaphysical position, no physical theory does, nor can) assume the mind is just electrical impulses in the brain, and then claim that therefore they can talk about how the mind evolved (because, again, they really CAN talk about how the brain evolved). That’s not the correct, actual-science interpretation of Darwinian theory, though, that’s just religious fanatics misappropriating it to their own ends. (Atheism is a religious position, just like anarchism is a governmental one. “Let us abolish X” is still a position RE: X.)

Posted by John Schuh on Thursday, Jan, 23, 2014 9:40 AM (EST):

Well, Evolutionists assume the truth of “natural selection,” even though Darwin doesn’t demonstrate how species actually originate. They assume that the mind is just—somehow—the product of electrical activity in the brain, which is somehow assumed to be the product of genetic activity even though they cannot link it to specific genes. Talk about the god of the gaps. Some of their leaps to conclusions are wider than the Grand Canyon.

Posted by Tom in AZ on Wednesday, Jan, 22, 2014 3:57 PM (EST):

@R.C.: He comes across a lot like certain Young Earth Creationists, with his relentless name-dropping of science-jargon. Some Christians seem to have reacted to the bogus idea of “Science vs. Religion” by capitulating to the alleged opposition, and attempting to put what is a metaphysical proposition on a “scientific” footing, never mind that you have to ASSUME certain metaphysical propositions are true to even do science, but not the other way around.

Posted by R.C. on Wednesday, Jan, 22, 2014 1:36 PM (EST):

Re: Tillich:

I fear that Paul Tillich had no skill for being a teacher; but rather only the skill of becoming a popular and admired professor.

The former requires that a person be able to convey information unambiguously to the mind in a fashion that delights the student with clarity of comprehension.

The latter requires only that a person be able to produce admiration in the hearer or reader or would-be student.

While a genuine teacher might be admired because of the clarity he produces, Tillich seems to be the other kind: He either knows what he is talking about, or not; either way, the reader or hearer does not; but to the extent Tillich sounds confident, he assumes that Tillich does and must be super-duper-smart for being able to talk about it with such a knowing air.

As an example: Tillich (in the linked webpage) states, “Now here I would say, unfortunately or fortunately, that Jesus was not an atomic scientist.” Unfortunately or fortunately? Which is it? Is it both? Can it be both? Not presumably in the same way. And what would “fortune” mean, applied to Jesus? Does the Eternal Logos sometimes happen to get lucky? He could have said, “Jesus was not an atomic scientist”; but Tillich is the type of squid-like writer who is more comfortable squirting a cloud of ink into the waters of philosophical discourse and then vanishing into its vague murk with a flick of the tentacles.

But all these are mere character flaws. If a blacksmith is also a complainer or a lover of bawdy jokes, his horseshoes may still be serviceable. But even had he been saintly in every other way, Tillich’s position on miracles is just wrong.

At least, I think it is. It is difficult to determine his exact position as he hovers submerged somewhere in that cloud of ink.

But he says, in reference to saints who levitated in contemplative prayer, “...an actual negation of gravitation would not be for me a ‘miracle.’ If such a phenomenon occurred, it would be to me demonic, because it would deny the holy law by which all things in the universe strive toward each other.”

Now this statement suggests he has not thought of “all things” as having their own subject-hoods by which, in accordance with their own nature and in joyful adoration of their King, they might alter their usual behaviors in His presence. A peasant woman who curtseys when the King’s carriage stops at her homestead is not violated by the alteration of her normal behavior. She would seem less herself, more a bad imitation of a peasant, if she went on toiling in her garden and seemed not to notice the King’s visit. She might even seem disloyal.

Now when a saint at prayer experiences the Divine Union, the King has come into his Bedchamber. Will not the servants at hand do obeisance? And how will they do it? Tillich is briefly on the right track when he says that miracles are “signs”: They signify, they point past themselves at Christ in some fashion.

Well, Tillich complains about the nullification of gravity, as a nullification of a holy law by which things strive for union. But when a saint drifts Heaven, is that not a very vivid sign that all creatures strive—or should strive—for union with God? It is not a matter of Earth’s gravity ceasing to exist; it is a matter of a more powerful gravitational field being present, as if Jupiter had just drifted past and the saint had been caught up in the striving for union with a far greater power.

This is not nullification; this is not lawlessness. It is not like a bad attempt at a sonnet written by a student who uses the wrong meter at one point because he can’t think of a word that fits. It is like when Shakespeare himself breaks one of his own “rules” in obedience to a higher rule, as when he insert an additional metric “foot” so that the reader feels rushed reading to the end of the line, just when the topic of the sonnet is a rush of emotion or a panic of time running out.

The variation of the norm is not an interruption of the whole. It is the decorative artistry which highlights the theme of the whole. It shows us what the whole is all about. The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth forth his handiwork, and when He is especially present, earth’s power of attraction quits plodding in her garden and does a curtsey to the Attraction of the King.

Tillich should have known that. But apparently he didn’t.

Posted by Tom in AZ on Tuesday, Jan, 21, 2014 4:42 PM (EST):

@Hernan: Tillich comes across in that interview as a willful obscurantist, like most existentialists (when Martin Heidegger is the most lucid writer of a movement, that movement has a problem). Right out the gate he’s deliberately committing the equivocation fallacy of the word “heaven”. Then he declares the idea he wishes to criticize to be “actually demonic”, and taught only by people “who didn’t know any better”—the ad hominem fallacy with just a dash of the ab auctoritate for flavor. Does he ever set forth his position like an honest adult?

Posted by David Peters on Tuesday, Jan, 21, 2014 4:00 PM (EST):

Wonderful. Thanks Mark for sharing this.

Posted by Hernan on Tuesday, Jan, 21, 2014 3:01 PM (EST):

Sorry, the Tillich text I meant is here:
http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=538&C=604

Posted by Hernan on Tuesday, Jan, 21, 2014 2:59 PM (EST):

I’m afraid Tillich knew better. http://www.ncregister.com/blog/mark-shea/private-revelation-two-stories-and-two-basic-types/
And I suspect catholic theology is going that way (the cathecism, for example, does not link miracles to the ‘supernatural’). IMO, to speak of ‘supernaturalism’ as a worldview - to which, by implied exclusiveness, a christian is obliged to subscribe, is just bad theology.

Posted by John Schuh on Tuesday, Jan, 21, 2014 2:07 AM (EST):

@Wayne. Well, they certainly did not convince some who saw the miracles performed by Jesus. Indeed, it made them afraid that their lives were a lie.

Posted by Wayne on Monday, Jan, 20, 2014 11:59 PM (EST):

I recall ex-Protestant ex-evangelist Charles Templeton recounting the story of a child healed before his eyes, apparently in response to his prayers. This event precipitated his becoming an agnostic. So miracles don’t always lead to faith.

Posted by C. Wharton on Monday, Jan, 20, 2014 3:22 PM (EST):

As has been said…“there are none so blind as those who will not see”.

Thank you for this and all of your many helpful articles.

caw

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Mark Shea

Mark P. Shea is a popular Catholic writer and speaker. The author of numerous books, his most recent work is The Work of Mercy (Servant) and The Heart of Catholic Prayer (Our Sunday Visitor). Mark contributes numerous articles to many magazines, including his popular column “Connecting the Dots” for the National Catholic Register. Mark is known nationally for his one minute “Words of Encouragement” on Catholic radio. He also maintains the Catholic and Enjoying It blog. He lives in Washington state with his wife, Janet, and their four sons.